Psionic Angband 1.0.6:
an attempt at documentation

Brief Summary:
  The problem with mages in current angband is that their spells (with the
exception of magic missile and other early attacks) are mainly utility and
defense.  The result is that mages rely on hand to hand, but cautiously
until getting globe of invulnerability (GOI) which makes the end-game silly.
The class of the psioncist attempts to rectify this in several ways.  First,
psionicists are weaker fighters than mages and have no GOI.  Also, many mage
attacks become useless since every monster is resistant to them at high
levels and their damage remains relatively constant.  Most psionic attacks
are either attack forms that are often unresisted (sound, life draining,
meteor, force) or new attack forms that monsters are less likely to resist
(three kinds of mental attack, disintegration, amnesia, pain, domination).
Also, damage is generally proportional to level, so attack spells remain
effective at higher levels.  Finally, an attempt has been made to make
as many powers useful throughout the game.  Many weak (or unthematic) utility
spells (destroy traps, cure poison, detect enchantment, etc...) have been
replaced with more specialized defenses (spells that resist breath weapons
or physical attacks or mental attacks) as well as utility spells that help
with spell casting (restoring mana or allowing "simultaneous" spells).
  The purposes of the variant are to create a mage-type that relies on magic
again as well as to create innovative new powers (see below for descriptions)
and use other ideas, such as wearable spell books.

General (Important) Information:

 First - Read the entire file!  (Maybe not the history of changes)
There are many important things about psionic powers that are not at all
obvious from their names or even from using them once or twice.  Failure
to read the fine print has already resulted in one YASD.

 A psionic "spell book" is called a focus and a psionic "spell" is a power.
There are 18 different psionic foci, divided into 6 disciplines and 3
levels (not to be confused with every other kind of level).  Wielding a
focus (in the amulet slot) gives you various boni and allows you to use
its powers.  They are destroyed only by electricity , but level 2 & 3
foci get saves.  Higher level foci give better boni when wielded and
are necessary for certain powers.

A few general things.  Psionicists are worse fighters than mages and have a
max of 3 attacks.  The command for psionics is 'n', although since this
conflicts with roguelike commands 'm' or 'p' will also work.
Most psionic foci give special boni when they are simply wielded - these
work for non-psionicists only if the NO_PSI_ERASE flag is enabled.  Unlike
mages, psionicists can wear gloves without penalty and use powers when
blind - however, they still can't use psionics when confused.  Failing to
successfully use a psionic power ("You fail to concentrate hard enough.")
only causes you to lose half the mana.  Building up too long a duration
in any power is dangerous; there's more on this below.

The disciplines are Telepathy, Psychoportation, Psychometabolism,
Psychokinesis(*), Metapsionics(*), and Clairsentience.
* - not found in shop #6

Following are the various disciplines and then their powers.

Telepathy:
I - +2 wis,chr
  Mind Thrust - the equivalent of magic missile +
    stunning/confusion/fear/sleep
  Mental Barrier - sust int,wis - res fear,conf, and a few monster spells
  Intimidate - like mage's fear but stronger
  Sleep - ditto
  Psionic Blast - psionic fire ball like mind thrust but more damage

II - +2 int,wis,chr - sust int,wis
  Psychic Crush - psionic attack that's harder to resist
  Mind Wrack - little damage but hardest to resist side effects

III - +3 int,wis,chr - sust int,wis - telepathy
  Domination - "The greater titan hits the AMHD.  The AMHD looks confused."
  Amnesia - each casting causes a monster to cumulatively lose 1/3 of their
    (total) spells as well as causing them to sleep and a few other things

Note on format: Telepathy I allows access to the first 5 powers. Telepathy
II allows access to those and psychic crush and mind wrack.  Telepathy III
lets you use them all.

Note on psionic attacks: None are bolts/beams. Instead, all except for
Psionic Blast are radius 0 balls, so any monster in sight can be targetted.
Also, stunning/confusion/etc.. is based on damage done, your level and the
monsters level.  Psychic Crush weights this in your favor and mind wrack
weights it much more.  Also, confused monsters are more susceptible.

Note to those who understand the source: Besides GF_DOMINATE and GF_AMNESIA,
there are three types of psionic attacks.  GF_PSI (mind thrust, psi blast,
ultrablast), GF_PSI2 (psy crush, *ultrablast*) and GF_PSI3 (mind wrack).
The higher the number the lower the chances of resisting damage and the
higher chance of stunning/confusion/fear/etc.  Player level, monster level,
unique status, monster intelligence and spells and damage also affect these
chances.  Psychic drain uses the GF_PSI routine for resists/specials.

Psychoportation:
I - +2 AC
  Blink - as the old dimension door
  Teleport - guess.
  Dimension Door - pick any destination within a certain distance - costs an
    extra turn or more if you pick a bad destination or an extra half turn
    regardless.
  Time/Space Anchor - no teleportation for anyone. That includes you. You
    resist nexus and time (!) also.

II - +5 AC, +2 dex
  Probability Travel - temporarily can teleport level at will with '<' and '>'
  Banishment - teleport other in a beam (just like everyone else)

III - +10 AC, +6 dex, random teleportation (as ring of teleportation)
  Recall - another staple
  Time Shift - gives you a free turn + 1/10th of a free turn... of course,
    it costs one turn to cast.  This one could be broken at high level,
    although it wouldn't be easy.

Psychometabolism:
I - +2 con - sust str,con
  Cell Adjustment - minor but efficient healing
  Adrenaline Contol - like berserk but better
  Biofeedback - 1/2 damage from most physical attacks
  Energy containment - resist fire,cold,elec,acid,poison

II - +2 str,con - sust str,con,dex
  Death Field - pay life for a big nether ball centered on yourself
  Complete Healing - the only drawback is that it takes 3 turns to recover.
    Test it in town next to an idiot.
  Drain Life - like the wand, except you gain life (1/2 dmg)

III - +3 str,con,dex - sust str,con,dex - hold life
  Shadowform - very little damage, no attacks, walk through walls.
  Double Pain - halves one monster's hitpoints if they don't save.

Psychokinesis:
I - res force
  Project Force - a beam of force with "fading damage" (important: see below)
  Inertial Barrier - 1/2 dam from monster breaths
  Sonic Boom - radius 5, sound attack
  Detonate - like meteor storm, radius 2.

II - res force, inertia, shards
  Disintegrate - does damage and destroys walls, radius 2
  Sphere of Cold - a lot of damage, radius 1
  Immolation - a lot of damage, radius 0

III - res force, inertia, shards, gravity 
  Balefire - damage proportional to your current hp (let them worry about
    instadeath if they forget their fire resistance...)

Metapsionics:
I
  Cannibalize - pay life and get mana
  Empower - a powerful recharge
  Receptacle - drain charges to get mana (note: it's best to not to drain
    wands halfway with this power - now they do damage when they explode)
  Psychic Surgery - restore int,wis,exp - remove fear

II
  Splice - do several powers in a row - cast it again to end a splice early.
  Ultrablast - a large psionic ball centered on yourself.
  Time Control - haste, but effective even if already hasted.

III
  Psychic Drain - a psionic attack that gives you mana.  It costs roughly
    one extra turn.  The area affected is ball of random radius.
  *Ultrablast* - big ultrablast, uses psychic crush formula for confusion,etc...

Note: wielding a metapsionic focus allows you to use any other focus in your
pack, although angband uses the minimum of the metapsionic focus level and
the other focus level. i.e. you're wielding metapsionics I and you have
telepathy II in your pack.  You can't use psychic crush without actually
wielding telepathy II.

Clairsentience:
I - +3 searching
  Detect Monsters - .
  Reveal Secrets - detect doors, traps, stairs
  Clairvoyance - magic mapping
  Awareness - temporary telepathy

II - +4 searching, res blind
  Read Object - identify

III - +5 searching, res blind, telepathy
  Read Aura - *identify*
  Analyze Monster - get full monster recall if it fails its save
  Precognition - you notice OOD items/monsters and vaults on level creation

Note: Normally, psionicists get feelings about objects the same way as mages.
When wielding a clairsentience focus, they get feelings as warriors
(far better).

Note: Included in the lib\edit directory is "r_info2.txt," an experimental
version where many monsters have psionic attacks.  Use at your own risk.

Certain attacks lose approximately 1/3 of their damage after each monster.
They are currently project force, psychic drain and life draining.

Certain powers cause you to lose (or gain) part of a turn.  Normally, one
action takes 100 energy.  There are some exceptions: shooting a bow when
you have 2 shots/round costs 50 energy per shot.  Basically gaining or
losing 1 energy is equivalent to gaining or losing 1% of a turn.

Time Shift - gain 5d(level) energy
Dimension Door - lose (60 - level) energy.  100 more if the destination
  is bad.  (i.e. "You fail to exit the astral plane correctly.")
Psychic Drain - lose d150 energy
Complete Healing - lose 350 - 2*level energy

Certain temporary powers do damage if their duration becomes too long.
This only happens if you try to "save up" a large amount of adrenaline
control, for example.  When you take damage, the duration of the spell
will be reduced.

Time Control - hits you with a ball of time
Shadowform - hits you with a nether ball
Adrenaline Control - simply does damage
Biofeedback - reduces duration without doing damage
Inertial Barrier - hits you with inertia (what else?)
Awareness - causes you to space out for a little while (lose d200 energy)
  The percent chance of this each turn is (# of turns of awareness left)
  divided by 1000, rounded down.  After you receive the message the first
  time and until awareness wears off or you quit, it's abbreviated as a
  period.

Three other powers can also kill you:
Receptacle, Cannibalize and Death Field.

Here are the other changes, largely unrelated to psionics:
-Keldon Jones's monster AI patch was added (ver 0.1.1).
-Many monsters have psionics.  If you're not playing a psionicist, this
  could be dangerous.
-Most dragons' melee attacks are much stronger.
-The black market generates deeper items the deeper you go.
-OOD monsters in vaults no longer contribute to level feelings.
-Ctrl-J is a new debugging command.  Note: setting the value of "oops" to 0
and then saving will wipe out temporary psionic effects.
-A more powerful heal spell has been added for monsters.
-Greg Wooledge's random artifacts (0.6.0) have been added
-the random artifact generator has been changed slightly
-temporary resistances have a chance of vanishing if built up too much.
There is a (# of turns of resistance left) divided by 256 (rounded down)
percent chance each turn of this happening.  This is in response to
energy containment.
-'C' shows average weapon damage, not counting to_hit and slays
-missiles show average damage when the appropriate launcher is used
(again, not counting to hit and slays, which are now more significant)
-Anduril is stronger (as in utumno)
-The One Ring is more common (1 in 10000 instead of 1 in a million).
-Broken items were removed to make room for psionic foci.
-The autoroller is about 1000 times faster in maximize mode.
-Cheat_know doesn't say 32767 kills any more (a side effect of analyze monster).
-Certain level generation constants have been slightly changed.
(OOD items/monster and vaults are more common)

Future changes:
-Right now, few monsters actually have the new heal spell. (You can add it by
adding HEAL2 to their spell lists).  It also maybe too powerful when combined
with monster AI.
-The domination interface could still use improvement.
-Exclusively psionic monsters should be added (like mind flayers).
-Psionicists may still be overpowered at high levels and probably favor
  their weapons too much.
-Perhaps wisdom should be used for amounts of mana.
-Random uniqes would be cool.
-Maybe different difficulties of psionicist should be introduced.
-A monk class should be created (half warrior, half psionicist).
-Better monster AI should be added (like Keldon Jones' patch) and monsters
 should choose offensive spells better.

Where it's at:
In case you've forgotten, psi-angband sits in
ftp://export.andrew.cmu.edu/angband/Variant
The files are p_exe???.zip, p_src???.zip, p_doc???.txt and p_dif???.txt
(??? is the appropriate version.)  Immediately after uploading,
they are in the /angband/Incoming directory, where they are invisible.

Note to programmers:
Psionic angband adds several internal features to the game.
 -New attack types, and item and monster flags.
  These are described elsewhere and can be found in defines.h.
 -Calling project with "who" set to "-2" will create an attack
  from neither monster nor player.  The global variable "_killer"
  describes what's on your tombstone.
 -If you want to combine psiband with your variant, use the diff
  file (patch -p0 < psi_diff).  Just give me credit and look closely
  at how I've changed saving and loading.
 -To use fading damage, set "fade_dam_on" to TRUE before calling
  project and FALSE afterwards.
 -I think that lib/edit/*_info.txt files can have entries out of
  order now, but that may not be true for all.

Credits:  Thanks to Keldon Jones, the author of Kamband (whose name
I don't know) and Greg Wooledge for allowing me to use parts of their
code (monster AI, automatic control of dominated monsters and random
artifacts respectively).  Thanks to Cam Moore, Neal Stangis and many
others for bug reports, suggestions and support.  Finally, I appreciate
the efforts of those who compile this for platforms other than DOS.

History:
1.0.6 - based on angband 2.8.3
	added Keldon Jones's monster AI (ver 0.1.1)
        telepathic attacks are more effective against high level monsters
	the pet code for kamband was stolen for dominated monsters, meaning that
	  you no longer have to (or can) micromanage them any more.
        dragons fight better
        the RES_PSI item flag is more useful
        some monsters have the RES_PSI and IM_PSI flags
	"Known bugs / Future changes" was replaced with "Future changes."
        cannibalize has a confirm prompt and precognition warns about it
        spells with durations were weakened
        deep foci are more shallow and rarer
        the awareness float message has been abbreviated
        the awareness high happens earlier
        when domination ends you risk a psychic attack from the monster
        adrenaline overdose does more damage
        energy containment ends early more often and doesn't last as long
        biofeedback speeds regeneration and has other minor effects
        certain monster attacks risk causing amnesia
        metapsionic foci work
        monster psionics are weaker and more dependent on monster level
        they are also standard - r_info.old is without psionics
        OOD monsters in jelly pits, zoos and graveyards no longer
          contribute to level feeling - instead there is a fixed bonus
        semantic changes, typos fixed, spell descriptions updated, etc..
        failure rates no longer have a 5% minimum

1.0.6 alpha - implements some of the 1.0.6 changes and is only released
        on the amiga

1.0.5 - precognition now works
        fixed bug where monsters couldn't become confused (whoops)
        buffering powers is now dangerous
        RES_PSI and IM_PSI were introduced as monster flags
        RES_PSI, META_PSI1 and META_PSI2 were introduced as item flags
         (metapsionics flags work like binary, for "META_PSI3" use both)
        several new psionic attacks were added for monsters (although
          few monsters actually have them)
        psychic drain was toned down
        temporary resistances have a chance of vanishing if you build them
          up too much
        confused monsters are more susceptible to psionic attacks
        domination wears off faster and the cursor is less buggy
        telepathic attacks have internal probabilities changed
        this documentation is more comprehensive

1.0.4 - the random artifact version is now 0.6.0
        the random artifact generator now loads a fresh artifact list
         whenever it fails to create an appropriate one (instead of
         reprocessing the old one)

1.0.3 - replaces "focuses" with "foci" and other semantic changes
        fixes average damage
        uniques resist a few special attacks better and recover faster from
          being stunned
        the "deep" foci are now rarer
        psionic foci are pre-*identified*
        the black market level now has a minimum
        a few autoroller bugs were fixed
        a few internal changes will facilitate eventual random uniques
        NO_PSI_ERASE is no longer the default
        the HEAL2 spell no longer results in hp overflow

1.0.2 - fixes almost every remaining bug introduced in ver 1.0.0
        (thanks to Cam Moore) - one might call it "semi-stable"

1.0.1 - fixes random severe bugs (like not wielding foci)

1.0.0 - brings psionic angband to angband 2.8.2, random artifacts 0.5.1
        makes psionicists more balanced, introduces fading damage
        introduces several bugs in the port

unnumbered - psi_exe.zip and psi_src.zip existed based on angband 2.8.1

Written by Aram Harrow (aram@mit.edu)
